Personal life of Leonardo da Vinci

Main article: Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci
Portrait in red chalk, circa 1512 to 1515.
Born	Lionardo di Ser Piero da Vinci
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Many and diverse fields of arts and sciences
Movement	High Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci, (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519), is regarded as the archetypal Renaissance Man. Little is known about his personal life and he appears to have been secretive about his most intimate relationships. However, much research and speculation has been invested in these aspects of his life, because of the fascination exerted by his artistic and scientific genius, and his apparent personal magnetism.

Description and analysis of Leonardo's character, personal desires and intimate behaviour has been based upon a number of sources: records concerning him, his biographies, his own written journals, his paintings, his drawings, his associates and speculations that were made concerning him by contemporaries.

These demonstrate a man who appears to have benefitted from his family nurture, who worked with others cooperatively in apprenticeship and encouragingly as a master and who provided well for the needs of those for whom he had responsibility.

Leonardo had a number of mutually beneficial relationships with several powerful patrons, including the King of France. He had, over the years, a large number of followers and pupils. With two of these in particular, Salai and Melzi, he maintained long and deeply caring relationships, widely considered to have been of a homoerotic nature.

Contemporary descriptions

A statue of Leonardo outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, based upon contemporary descriptions.

Descriptions and portraits of Leonardo combine to create an image of a man who was tall, athletic and extremely handsome. Portraits indicate that as an older man, he wore his hair long, at a time when most men wore it cropped short, or reaching to the shoulders. While most men were shaven or wore close-cropped beards, Leonardo's beard flowed over his chest.

His clothing is described as being unusual in his choice bright colours, and at a time when most mature men wore long garments, Leonardo's preferred outfit was the short tunic and hose generally worn by younger men. This image of Leonardo has been recreated in the statue of him that stands outside the Uffizi Gallery.

Vasari's descriptions

According to Vasari, "In the normal course of events many men and women are born with various remarkable qualities and talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind....Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied were solved with ease. He possessed great strength and dexterity; he was a man of regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind..."

Portraits

Leonardo's face is best known from a drawing in red chalk that appears to be a self portrait. However, there is some controversy over the identity of the subject, because the man represented appears to be of a greater age than the 67 years lived by Leonardo. A solution which has been put foward is that Leonardo deliberately aged himself in the drawing, as a modern forensic artist might do, in order to provide a model for Raphael's painting of him as Plato in The School of Athens. A profile portrait in the Ambrosiana Gallery in Milan is generally accepted to be a portrait of Leonardo, and also depicts him with flowing beard and long hair. This image was repeated in the woodcut designed for the first edition of Vasari's Lives.

Personal habits and talents

Character

Leonardo was a man with great personal appeal, kindness and generosity and was generally well-loved by his contemporaries.

According to Vasari "Leonardo's disposition was so lovable that he commanded everyone's affection". He was "a sparkling conversationalist" who charmed Ludovico il Moro with his wit. Vasari sums him up by saying "In appearance he was striking and handsome, and his magnificent presence brought comfort to the most troubled soul; he was so persuasive that he could bend other people to his will. He was physically so strong that he could withstand violence and with his right hand he could bend the ring of an iron door knocker or a horseshoe as if they were lead. He was so generous that he fed all his friends, rich or poor.... Through his birth Florence received a very great gift, and through his death it sustained an incalculable loss."

Some of Leonardo's personal wisdom is to be found in a series of fables that he wrote. A prevalent theme is the mistake of placing too high esteem upon one's self, and the benefits to be gained through awareness, humility and endeavour.

Child prodigy

Vasari says of the young Leonardo "He would have been very proficient in his early lessons, if he had not been so volatile and flexible; for he was always setting himself to learn a multitude of things, most of which were shortly abandoned. When he began the study of arithmetic, he made, within a few months, such remarkable progress that he could baffle his master with the questions and problem that he raised....All the time, through all his other enterprises, Leonardo never ceased drawing..."

Leonardo's father, Ser Piero, realising that his son's talents were extraordinary, took some of his drawings to show his friend, Andrea Verrocchio, who ran one of the largest artists' workshops in Florence. Leonardo was accepted for apprenticeship and "soon proved himself a first class geometrician". Vasari says that during his youth Leonardo made a number of clay heads of smiling women and children from which casts were still being made and sold by the workshop some 80 years later. Among his earliest significant known paintings are an Annunciation in the Uffizi, the angel that he painted as a collaboration with Verrocchio in the Baptism of Christ, and a small predella of the Annunciation to go beneath an altarpiece by Lorenzo di Credi. The little predella picture is probably the earliest.

Diverse interests

Main article: Leonardo da Vinci - scientist and inventor

The diversity of Leonardo's interests, remarked on by Vasari as apparent in his early childhood, was to express itself in his journals which record his scientific observations of nature, his meticulous dissection of corpses to understand anatomy, his experiments with machines for flying, for generating power from water and for besieging cities, his studies of geometry and his architectural plans, as well as personal memos and creative writing including fables.

Musical ability

It appears from Vasari's description that Leonardo first learnt to play the lyre as a child and that he was very talented at improvisation. In about 1479 he created a lyre in the shape of a horses head, which was made "mostly of silver", and of "sonorous and resonant" tone. Lorenzo de'Medici saw this lyre and wishing to better his relationship with Ludovico Sforza, the usurping Duke of Milan, he sent Leonardo to present this lyre to the Duke as a gift. Leonardo's musical performances so far surpassed those of Ludovico's court musicians that the Duke was delighted.

Ambidexterity

Template:Sectionstub This great artist was one of the few ambidextrous people that showed their unique characteristic at the time.

Love of nature

Leonardo had always loved nature. One of the reasons was because of his childhood environment. Near his childhood house were mountains, trees, and rivers. There were also many animals. This environment gave him the perfect chance to study the surroundng area; it also made him start to have interest in painting.

Vegetarianism

Leonardo was a vegetarian for much of his life until death. He once stated: "(Of the mouth of man which is a tomb) there shall come forth loud noises out of the tombs of those who have died by an evil and violent death." - Leonardo da Vinci, (Prophecies).

Leonardo's sexual orientation

When examining Leonardo's relationships much speculation has been made concerning the nature of his relationships with his pupils, Salai and Melzi. Since the 16th century it has been claimed that there was a strongly erotic element to his relationship with Salai. This is supported by a number of erotic drawings depicting the youth. Melzi claimed that Leonardo's feelings for him were of a passionate nature. That Leonardo deeply loved both the young men, encouraging their gifts and indulging their whims, is beyond question. They appear to have been the two most significant emotional attachments of his life.

Leonardo's love for youths, and the possible sexual expression of that affection, followed the common pattern by which homosexual affection was expressed in the Renaissance, in particular in Florence where a special organization, the Officers of the Night was charged with suppressing the practice of pederastic sodomy.

In 1476, while living in the workshop of Verrocchio, Leonardo was accused anonymously of sodomy with a 17 year-old model, Jacopo Saltarelli, a youth already known to the authorities for his sexual escapades with men. After two months of investigation he was acquitted, ostensibly because no witnesses stepped forward though others claim it was due to his father's respected position. For some time afterwards, Leonardo and the others were kept under observation by Florence's Officers of the Night as shown by surviving legal records of the Podestà and the Officers of the Night.

Portrait of Salai

Leonardo's alleged love of boys was to become a topic of discussion, speculation and literature as early as the 16th century and was fictionalised in "Il Libro dei Sogni" (The Book of Dreams), an imaginary dialogue on l'amore masculino (male love, or masculine love) written by the contemporary art critic and theorist Gian Paolo Lomazzo, an acquaintance of Francesco Melzi. Leonardo appears as one of the protagonists in the book and declares, "Know that male love is exclusively the product of virtue which, joining men together with the diverse affections of friendship, makes it so that from a tender age they would enter into the manly one as more stalwart friends."

In the dialogue, the interlocutor inquires of Leonardo about his relations with his assistant, il Salaino, "Did you play the game from behind which the Florentines love so much?" Leonardo answers, "And how many times! Keep in mind that he was a beautiful young man, especially at about fifteen."

Modern opinions

Study of coition, in hemisection.

Leonardo stated:- "The act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions".

This was interpreted by Sigmund Freud, in an analysis of the artist, as an indication of "frigidity".

According to Annand Taylor, Leonardo hated the act of procreation. "But he had a great tenderness for the mystery of birth. As a Renaissance pagan he is nympholept, ravished by a vision of immortal beauty; like any mediæval monk and schoolman he is charmed by the mystical vision of virginity. He hates the act of procreation, but he loves the child. As an artist he solved his problem by a dream of parthenogenesis, or by bridal with a god, which, while remote and miraculous, yet casually admitted to the imagination the haunting sensuousness that could not be entirely laid, in a subtle and etherealized and perhaps perverted way that pleased him."

Relationships

Pupils and companions

Salaino

Leonardo's servant and assistant, Caprotti il Salaino by an anonymous artist (1495)

Leonardo had a long-lasting affectionate relationship with Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, who he referred to as his pupil or servant. Gian Giacomo, who entered Leonardo's household in 1490 at the age of 10, was nicknamed Salai or il Salaino ("The Little Unclean One" i.e., the devil). He was described by Giorgio Vasari as "a graceful and beautiful youth with fine curly hair, in which Leonardo greatly delighted." Leonardo’s notebooks during their early years contain pictures of the handsome, curly-haired adolescent and young man.

The relationship was not an easy one. A year later Leonardo made a list of the boy’s misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton." The "Little Devil" had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a fortune on apparel, among which were twenty-four pairs of shoes. Nevertheless, il Salaino remained Leonardo's companion, servant, and assistant for the next thirty years, and at Leonardo's death, he was bequeathed the Mona Lisa, a valuable piece even then, as it is valued in Salai's own will at £200,000.

Though Salai was always introduced as Leonardo's "pupil", his painted works have always been considered inferior to those of other pupils of Leonardo such as Boltraffio. He is credited with a nude portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, known as Monna Vanna, painted in 1515 under the name of Andrea Salai.[2] .

Salaino as John the Baptist

Gian Paolo Lomazzo's portrayal of Leonardo's relationship with Salai as homosexual or pederastic has gained wide acceptance in part because of the homoerotic nature of Leonardo's painting John the Baptist for which Salai appears to have been the model. The eroticism of this painting has been explored by critics such as Martin Kemp and James Saslow.

Several drawings by Leonardo are highly erotic depictions of the same young man. Il Salaino's name also appears (crossed out) on the back of an erotic drawing (ca. 1513) by the artist, The Incarnate Angel,. It is seen as a humorous and revealing take on his major work, St. John the Baptist. Rediscovered in 1991 in a German noble collection, it is one of the number of now missing erotic drawings by Leonardo once in the British Royal Collection, but which were possibly sold or stolen.

Another erotic work, found on the verso of a foglio in the Atlantic Codex, depicts il Salaino's behind, towards which march several penises on two legs.

Francesco Melzi

In 1506, Leonardo met Count Francesco Melzi, the 15 year old son of a Lombard aristocrat. Melzi himself, in a letter, described Leonardo's feelings towards him as a sviscerato et ardentissimo amore ("deeply felt and most ardent love"). Salai eventually accepted Melzi's continued presence and the three undertook journeys throughout Italy.

Melzi became Leonardo's life companion, and is considered to have been his favourite student. He was with Leonardo at Clos Luce at the time of his death.

Patrons, friends and colleagues

• His patrons including the Medici, Ludovico Sforza, Cesare Borgia in whose service he spent the years of 1502 and 1503 and King Francis I of France.
• He had working relationships with two other notable scientists, Luca Pacioli and Marcantonio della Torre and was also a close friend of Niccolò Machiavelli.
• He also had a close friendship and long-lasting relationship with Isabella d'Este, a renowned patroness of the arts, whose portrait he drew while on a journey which took him through Mantua.
• De Predis brothers and cooperation over Virgin of the Rocks.
• Feud with Michelangelo

Leonardo da Vinci fingerprint reconstructed

Anthropologists in Italy claim that they have pieced together a reconstruction of Leonardo da Vinci's left index fingerprint. The reconstruction of the fingerprint is the result of three years of research and could also help attribute disputed paintings or manuscripts, said Luigi Capasso, director of the Anthropology Research Institute at Chieti University in central Italy. "It adds the first touch of humanity. We knew how Leonardo saw the world and the future … but who was he? This biological information is about his being human, not being a genius, Mr Capasso said.

The discovery could help shed light on a wealth of information including the food the artist ate and whether his mother was Arabic. The research was based photographs of about 200 fingerprints—most of them taken from about 52 papers handled by Leonardo in his life. The artist often ate while working and Mr Capasso and other experts said his fingerprints could include traces of saliva, blood or the food he ate the night before—information that could help clear up questions about his origins.

For instance, experts determined that the fingerprint suggested Leonardo's mother was of "oriental origin. "It's not like every population has typical fingerprints, but they do have specific proportions among their signs. The one we found in this fingertip applies to 60 per cent of the Arabic population, which suggests the possibility that his mother was of Middle-Eastern origin," Mr Capasso said. The idea that Leonardo's mother could have been a slave who came to Tuscany from Constantinople — now Istanbul, Turkey — is not new and has been the object of separate research.

See also

• Leonardo da Vinci
• Cultural depictions of Leonardo da Vinci
• Leonardo da Vinci - scientist and inventor
• Pederasty
• Historical pederastic couples
• Bacchus (Leonardo)
• St. John the Baptist (Leonardo)

External links

• "Leonardo da Vinci" in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.
• Leonardo da Vinci by Maurice Walter Brockwell' at Project Gutenberg
• Vasari Life of Leonardo: in Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
• Leonardo's Paintings and Drawings (flash format
• Leonardo's Will
• Leonardo da Vinci fingerprint reconstructed